


i read you like a magazine

by quick_ly



Category: Nothing Much to Do
Genre: F/M, Gen, and also hero being very unlike herself, cursing, lots and lots of cursing, this is an au if i ever met one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-03
Updated: 2015-04-03
Packaged: 2018-03-21 00:26:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3670677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quick_ly/pseuds/quick_ly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Amazing, they sometimes call her. Amazing Hero Duke. If only they knew: that’s exactly what she wants them to think." Hero Duke as Amy Elliot Dunne from "Gone Girl"</p>
            </blockquote>





	i read you like a magazine

**Author's Note:**

> GOSH. this started out as me wanting to do a legit Gone Girl/NMTD AU because I swear there are a fair amount of parallels and IT WORKS!, but then I realized the amount of work that would take and also I just sort of moved it in this direction, which is basically the most niche thing that has come out of this fandom probably? (unless something wants to give me another example cause I am all for them.) I have absolutely no idea if this works and I have a feeling that a majority of people are not gonna be hip to it, but also it has been sitting on my computer for a few weeks and I just want to post the damn thing).
> 
> Warnings: so aside from a hella lot of cursing (and I am talking serious cursing occasionally being aimed at someone - if you have seen the movie you know what I am talking about), this fic presents a very alternative (bold that) take on Hero, one that is not really in tune with the way a lot of the fandom sees her. This is literally Hero as Amy Elliot Dunne, and if you don't know what that means, without spoiling, it means a very different version of the character. Just like know that going in. Spoilers for the movie/book, I guess, at least the core of who Amy is. And big thanks to my number one [Susie](http://bittersweet-truths.tumblr.com/) for reading this over and assuring me it wasn't shit. Title taken from everyone's favorite song "Blank Space".

Hero Duke. Hero Fucking Duke. The princess of Messina; beautiful, kind, giving. Her older brother is the football couch, her cousin equally pretty but with a little more bite to her. People like Hero best, who is just shy of sixteen and already the envy of everyone she comes in contact with. She is just so gosh darn _nice_ , but not in an annoying way. She’s genuine, a real one in a million. Someone looks at her, and they just know – that girl, right there, is going to grow up stunning and brilliant and completely unaware of it all, never big headed, never conceited.

Amazing, they sometimes call her. Amazing Hero Duke.

If only they knew: that’s exactly what she wants them to think.

_Amazing Fucking Hero Duke._

 

 

 

People always like to put you in boxes. Hero has known this for as long as she can remember, the first idea that was ever crystal clear in her mind. People will take your personhood and put you into a single box, because people are lazy, and the amount of effort it takes to really know an individual is too much for the average Joe. It’s too much for the average anyone, really. Boxes and categories are just so much easier. _This person is good, and this one is bad; she is a slut, but he is a knight in shining armor_. Most people like to think they are better than that – _I’m not an asshole, I would never judge a book by its cover_ – but they never really are. (People aren’t fucking books.) They will label and categorize and stamp every single person they meet, and when someone doesn’t end up meeting whatever grand criteria that has been loaded onto them, suddenly, they are a traitor.

Hero has known this for years, but for the longest time she didn’t actually care. She was an angel, a virgin-pure sweetheart who could do no wrong, and as far as arbitrary labels go, it worked for her. Better to be seen as the cutest little darling in the world than a whore, after all – it wasn’t exactly right or wrong, but it did make life a little bit easier, and Hero at least thought she had some control over it. Because it wasn’t all lies – she did sip her tea and say gosh; she did in fact love to bake and wear knee-high socks. And really, since when is anyone completely honest about who they are? Bea and Ben had been in love for years; Robbie was fucking some year eleven; Pedro had a thing for Balthazar. People are made up of different parts – there’s the stuff that is pretty, the stuff they show to the rest of the world in bright, shiny colors (and that in turn, the world assumes make up the whole). And then there’s everything else.

(The everything else includes, but is not limited to: knowing that everyone sees her as some Virgin Mary type simply because of the way she looks, and exploiting it; internally rolling her eyes at every single trivial thing her peers are obsessed with, and then turning around and pretending to be interested; being well aware that just about every single person in school wanted to get in her pants, and also knowing that she was far too good for just about any of them; being a goddamn bitch.)

So she allowed for the assumptions, she gave people the opportunity to see her through a single lens. If you’re the one with the power behind your image, she thought, than you are the one pulling all the strings. This is what regular people do, after all; they try to market themselves to the world as whatever it is they see as the best. That’s all Hero was doing; marketing.

And then some fucking idiot came and pulled the rug out from under her, and she had to make a plan B.

 

 

 

They really notice each other for the first time in maths, Claudio bumbling and falling all over himself and Hero thinking, _what an adorable idiot_. He was clearly some sort of buffoon, tripping and making a fool of himself (not that anyone besides her had really noticed), and Hero could tell right off the bat that he was self-conscious about it all, was afraid of being some sort of target; and yet there was something more. He was incredibly good looking – like, in that way where there wasn’t really any discussion or debate about the matter, you just look at him and it is sort of established that he better looking than the average person (sort of in the way that she is, Hero considers, although she also thinks it’s fair to say that she is far prettier than he is handsome). And more so, he didn’t seem like an asshole. He was nervous and kind of shy, but that sort of says something about a person – that he was so good looking, so clearly the cutest in the class, and evidently had no idea. It was charming, his stupidity.

When she looks back on it, she envisions it like some sort of fairytale dream thing. It’s not as though they locked eyes from across the room or anything, but she did notice him. She remembers seeing him and thinking _we would work together_. Hero had never had a boyfriend before, mostly because she couldn’t be bothered to pretend to be at all interested in any of the egotistical morons that surrounded her, but Claudio seemed like a good place to start. He seemed genuinely sweet – he seemed like a good guy.

When he finally sat down and glanced her way again, Hero had given him a smile – sneaky, shy, innocent, all the things that she supposedly was. He was putty in her hands after that.

 

 

 

The thing about being smarter than everyone else is that it means you always have the upper hand. The people around her think she is some sweet, delicate flower only because she lets them, only because it is a part of the picture that she has allowed them to see (or, it’s all they really want to see, because again boxes and shit, but she has given them the curtsey of pretending that’s all there is). And it’s funny because, they all think she sees the best in them, or rather, they think she _just_ sees the best in them. She sees the best, obviously, because she is a smart person and as it turns out, when you are not lazy, people aren’t that hard to figure out. So she sees the best, just like she sees the worst, because she sees everything.

And Hero is pretty sure that no one would ever want a single person to see all of them, but really it shouldn’t matter, because most people are equally assholes or jerks or at the very least a little weird. And also, it’s not like she gives a shit, like she really cares if someone isn’t exactly what they say they are. She just pays a little extra attention, gets a lot of info, and files it away when it seems relevant (which it rare; she usually isn’t actually interested enough in a person to really try to get to know them). It’s not rocket science.

The most it ever comes out to be is amusing, or at the very least, eye roll worthy. Tom is dating Jessie, when he really wants to be dating Jordon; Fiona likes to pretend that she is bad at math, but only so Brian will tutor her. Its high school, ergo, it’s all very trivial.

And then there are people like John, who somehow thinks he isn’t just as transparent as the rest of them, when really he is even more so. He sulks around all the time with that girl Cora (who so obviously likes him, which is sad since he so obviously doesn’t), feeling bad about himself while simultaneously hating his brother and Claudio and Ben and all of them. And he somehow thinks that he is being sneaky, that no one notices because of his actions, as if they haven’t ever been caught on camera – as if no one can tell when he listens in on conversations or tries to rile up Claudio.

(The reality of course isn’t that he is some sort of stealth master – it’s that no one cares).

She thinks he’s alright, though. Sort of dark and broody, but also not as dumb as most people they go to school with, and at least he has a reason to be in such a shit mood all the time (since Pedro seems to be about the worst brother a person could ask for). Hero can tell that he thinks she is just as vapid as everyone else, but she also thinks he might see a little more in her, that he doesn’t buy into her getup quite as much as most people do. He’s the sort of person that she could see herself fucking in a few years, when they’re all out of school and at some party all their older friends are throwing and they’ve found themselves both sitting in the same corner being anti-social, drinking the same hard liquor.

Still, it does come as a slight surprise when he is suddenly telling Pedro on camera that she is cheating on Claudio (because she watches those videos, obviously, as though the simple act of watching a five minute video on his channel takes any time or effort), if only because Hero is fairly sure she has never spoken more than five words to the guy. Hero is rarely blind sighted – it simply isn’t in her nature – but this does shock her a little. Everything had been going so nicely and sweet, and suddenly John has just come along to complicate things. It’s exhausting, really.

But she doesn’t worry. Because Claudio is the good guy – Claudio is the one she has chosen, the one who is supposed to know that she loves him (or at least, believe she loves him because it’s necessary). He has made her a happier, easier person, and Hero in turn has made him smarter, better. She has been nothing but amazing to Claudio; he owes it to her not to be a dumbass.

So she holds the sleepover, and let’s Meg go off and hook up with Robbie in her room (because she knows that’s what it all is). She films herself in the morning being all genuine and shit, and uploads it right away.

Hero lets the pieces fall. She waits for Claudio to prove himself.

 

 

 

A few days later “Hypothetically” goes up, and Hero decides that maybe he is just confused, that maybe the guy just needs a little time, and she can give him that, she supposes. None of the other reactions really surprise her (because again, she can read people; she knows that Ben isn’t really a dick, just like she knows that Pedro is), but she decides to take the whole thing with a grain of salt. Let it simmer, allow things to calm out.

She’s just as affectionate and sweet at school. She posts lots of cute pictures on Instagram. She uploads the “First Time” video and makes sure to name drop him more than once.

And nothing.

He’s distant, and weird, and always too busy to hang out or whatever. He’d never been a good actor, but this performance was fucking pathetic, as if he wanted her to know that he knew, and it began to occur to her; he wasn’t just falling for John’s story. He was embracing it.

He wanted her to be that girl, the girl who manipulated and cheated and then got caught. He wanted to embarrass her, to make some sort of show out of it all (John was clearly prepping him for her sixteenth, and even through her anger, Hero had to conclude that it was kind of a brilliant move on his part). Claudio had decided that, if she wasn’t his perfect virginal princess, she wasn’t worthy of being a person. He had decided that he was going to win.

Was he really that stupid, that much of a pig head? She always knew he was an idiot, but she had thought that he was better than the lot of them, not just another cocky prick. This person – this idiotic little boy going about thinking he had any sort of control in these matters – this was not someone she had agreed to date, not in the least. Did he really think he would get to destroy her and end up happier than ever?

No fucking way.

 

 

 

Claudio can’t act for shit, but Hero gets excellences in drama. Hero knows how to put on a show.

She plays up the cuteness, posting about the party non-stop and being _so gosh darn nice_ to everyone that walks through the door. She wears that blue dress she had brought up before, but does her make-up a little darker, just slightly edgier, as if tempting him to think about what he saw that night. What he has chosen to believe is one-hundred percent true.

Really, she wants him to explode. But she also wants him to actually believe he has control in it.

(And honestly, if he wasn’t so much of an idiot she would feel bad for him, because it has literally gotten to the point where the guy is merely a puppet, being tugged along as her and John tell him what exactly it is he is supposed to do. Claudio was never an equal match for her, really, just like the fight they are suddenly in isn’t even close to fair, because the poor guy doesn’t know that he simply can’t win. He knows it’s a game, just not that he is the piece everyone is moving about.)

And she has to hand it to him, he knows how to do a reaction. The way he spits out anger and throws dirty words is sort of impressive, in a sick way. And what’s even more amusing is that he is so incredibly proud of himself, like he really thinks that he is exposing her or something, that the tears falling from her eyes are actually genuine. He calls her a fucking slut, and it’s in this moment that all his sliminess sneaks out, his disgusting core shining bright.

Hero can handle slime; she’s pretty fucking filthy herself. But you have to be smart about it. You can’t just show it off to the world in the way you do with your good traits, because most people aren’t able to handle it. Claudio storms off, feeling like he has won, and Hero let’s Bea carry her to the other room, letting a gentle cough slip out and trying not to let even the slightest hint of a smile cross her face.

Because Claudio is the one who just did all the dirty work. Claudio is the one who just dug his grave.

 

 

 

The thing about being the best is that it means never doing anything half-assed. Her work at the party would mean nothing if it only destroyed Claudio and Pedro, because they were the targets to begin with. She’d only be helping John if she didn’t fuck him up has well, because John needed to learn.

People work for things. People pay. People suffer consequences.

 

 

 

(The stuff she did after John started laying his ground work was never about reassuring Claudio of her love ( _ha!_ ), it was about covering her own ass.

She posts her “First Time” video and just happens to mention the lung condition as if it’s a coincidence? As if she couldn’t already tell exactly what was happening, as if she didn’t know from the moment she watched “Hypothetically” that Claudio wasn’t who she thought he was, that Claudio was in fact just like everyone else. As if she actually liked him enough to give him more than one single tiny chance.

Please. None of this was ever about him, the dumb decent looking guy she dated for five minutes when she was fifteen. He wasn’t a worthy competitor, didn’t deserve a real fight or any actual brain power.

He was never her real target).

 

 

 

The idea to pretend that Hero is really sick is technically Bea’s idea, at least she thinks it is. Hero makes a thing about how it is wrong or immoral or whatever, and Bea insists and Ben sort of backs her up, and Hero _just can’t help herself_ , she lets them do what they feel is best, since it really was crummy what all the boys did to her anyway and she just needs people to listen.

(How does that sound? Convincing?)

And maybe a part of her feels annoyed, that Bea and Ben are getting credit for all her hard work, but whatever, it doesn’t really matter (because she does actually love Bea, and is on her way to seeing Ben as a sort of older brother since Leo is officially on her shit list; maybe Hero isn’t in fact the nicest person around, but she’s not a monster – she can love and support and care about other people; besides, who actually is truly a nice and genuine person all the time?), she is the one in control and things are going according to plan, and she didn’t even have to disappear. Claudio and Pedro have been doing exactly as they should (that last video at Ben’s was honestly perfection – she couldn’t have manipulated them into showing more of their true, horrible selves if she tried), but it is about high time that John started to pay. He is the one who really deserves her wrath, after all.

The video of Bea comes out on Tuesday. He’s already been missing for a bit at this point (Hero can just imagine him, hiding out somewhere, feeling like a terrible person; it gives her a great satisfaction), but within a few days he has uploaded his confession, and it’s filled with guilt and remorse and anger. He absolutely hates Pedro, but he outlines it so well, makes it all very clear (which really only helps her), and he lets Claudio fall into the same box; the nice guys who seemed cool and genuine and are actually assholes. But he feels terrible for her, makes it obvious that she wasn’t meant to be the victim (even if that is a shitty excuse and not one that she will accept), and it makes her feel so so good, the way the tables have so nicely turned.

In short, it’s absolutely beautiful.

 

 

 

Hero has always been slightly intrigued by the idea of attending her own funeral. Not for any particularly morbid reasons ( _god_ , no, although Hero will acknowledge that the simple desire to go to her funeral probably isn’t entirely without its sketchy elements), but more so to see what people say about her, what her impression has been, what everyone has taken away from her as an individual. She sits in the bushes, watching as everyone acts somber and talks about how wonderful she is. Hero, the beautiful sweet angle who could never hurt a fly, who was always kind and giving and thoughtful. Hero, the most adorable creature ever; incredibly caring, abnormally intelligent, and completely stunning in every way.

 _You’re goddamn right_ , she thinks.

The part where Claudio talks makes her want to gag a little, because after everything he’s put her through, the jackass still hasn’t learned a thing; he still seems to insist on making it all about him (which is slightly ironic, she thinks, since in actuality he was really of minor importance), and even worse, he thinks that they have some deep emotional bond that will cause them to always love and support each other or some shit. In his dreams. He only wishes he could be lucky enough to have an actual emotional connection with her.

Still, it seems about the right time to make her entrance, after he has made his little speech or whatever he wants to call it. She’d planned the whole thing out perfectly, from her dress and make-up and hair (all muted, sweet and innocent, buttoned up), to the way she wanted it to sounds when the words fell out (she’d practiced over and over in the mirror till she had the whole scene memorized; words that were angry, but also had a pain within them, with just the right inflection and facial expression and level of crying). Honestly, this is the fucking performance of her life.

She doesn’t exactly expect him to walk over and hug her, and is pretty repulsed by the whole thing to be frank (it’s a tight hug, as if he is trying to be comforting, which _ugh_ , no thank you, the most comforting thing for her at the moment would be to slit his throat and watch the blood spout over her pretty little white dress), but it only takes her a second to realize that she needs to hug him back. Tentatively, yes, but it needs to be reciprocated slightly, because Ursula is filming and it’s going to be the only thing anyone will be talking about at school for some time. She needs to be shown to be forgiving, or at least attempting to be; she needs to be the bigger person, the girl who has been dragged through the mud but will not let it define her, who is better than all the people who tried to destroy her. Who can look the guy who basically destroyed her life for a little bit in the eye and say, _it’s okay, I am going to try to move on_.

People will hate him.

 

 

 

Being the all-around amazing person that she is, Hero tells everyone that they should forgive the boys as well, but it’s not exactly the words she says that do the dirty work; it’s the way she’s saying them. Soft spoken, looking downwards always. As if she is trying to convince herself that this is the mature move – that’s it the right move, because Hero Duke is all about doing what is right. People walk away not thinking that they guys should be forgiven, but instead that they deserve to be punished, for causing harm to such a sweet and fragile being. It’s perfect.

But it’s also not quite enough, because they aren’t all here to suffer. Pedro and Claudio may be going through some sort of social hell (and it really is quite beautiful – half the school won’t even look them in the eyes), but main perpetrator is still hiding away, feeling like shit all by his lonesome. And that’s not fair. Personal guilt is nothing if there isn’t any public shaming to go along with it.

So she makes the video with Claudio, in part because she wants to continue to establish herself as sweet and broken and trying in this scenario (“god, Hero has been through so much. She is a better person than me for working to forgive, and yet did you see the way she glanced at him? She is still going through so much pain”), but mostly to get that asshole right back where he belongs. John has got a lot more time in purgatory than the others, that’s for sure (since he’s got a whole other year of school, which just means more time for her to smile awkwardly and everyone around to rush to her rescue), but it needs to goddamn start already. He’s not allowed to hide out from his punishment.

 

 

 

They talk during the picnic, briefly, and it’s the first time that she thinks he’s ever really looked at her, truly, not as some sweet innocent blonde or the girl that everyone believe her to be, but as who she actually is – the everything else as opposed to what she shows the rest of the world.

(No one has ever looked at her like that. It’s slightly unsettling, not that she leads on.)

“I know what you did,” he says. It comes out very clear, like it is something he has thought about, calculated, and deemed a fact. He doesn’t fault in his words, and it’s funny really, that she thought for a second he had called her over to apologize. Obviously she read that one wrong. “I know who you really are.”

The thing is, he doesn’t say it like an insult or an accusation, but instead like it is some sort of praise, like he is actually impressed with her. Or maybe just impressed with himself for figuring her out.

“And what does that mean?” she asks all innocent smile and raised shoulders, careful but also playing along because this is the first time in possibly forever that she has had something slightly resembling an equal match.

“It means you’re kind of a cunt.”

And it’s funny, because he actually thinks he has won this round, as if she is really all that afraid of another person knowing who she really is. As if just because he knows that he suddenly knows everything.

(Because that’s the thing about most people – they are lazy. It only takes the tiniest bit of effort to see that much more of an individual, even her. He has put in a little more effort, and has gotten himself a little more info. But hardly everything.)

“Yeah,” she starts, pushing back a strand of her hair and tentatively placing a hand on his shoulder, “but I’m the cunt you want.”

Hero isn’t sure she has ever felt more satisfaction than when all the color suddenly leaves his face. He didn’t think she knew that one. He didn’t think anyone did, not at all.

Game. Set. Match.

Sometimes, it’s good showing your true colors to a few selected individuals. It makes life more interesting.

 

 

 

epilogue. 

 

 

 

_What are you thinking? How are you feeling? Who are you? What have we done to each other? What will we do?_

It’s a few years later, and Hero and John are sitting in the corner at a party that their older friends have decided to throw, waxing pathetic poetics and drinking the hard liquor. It’s late into the night, and he’s giving her this look that says it all – that a part of him wants to know her, that he thinks he does know her, at least better than anyone else (which, maybe that’s true a little bit, but also not really). That he truly believes that they have this sick, deep connection, based on their mutual intelligence and general fucked-up-ness, and that this is just the beginning of what is to be a passionate and complicated love affair.

He thinks that they are some sort of twisted soulmates.

Please. As if she would ever have a soulmate, or a deep romantic attachment with someone just because they happen to both occasionally be terrible fucked up people. Hero Duke’s soulmate is Hero Duke.

(She still fucks him though.)

**Author's Note:**

> feedback and suck is always appreciated. also if you were into this and have any sort of graphic skills, you should hit me up cause i might kind of have a fanmix in the works. kind of.


End file.
